


From the Land of Revolution

by eudaimon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-13
Updated: 2010-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:13:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for bzzinglikeneon whose Nate Fick characterisation I borrow from shamelessly. This is the long promised follow-up to my fic, the bones inside you singing out again, in which Brad pays a visit to Doc Bryan and his girlfriend in Philadelphia. Title from "To Take You Home" by Frank Turner.</p>
    </blockquote>





	From the Land of Revolution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bzzinglikeneon whose Nate Fick characterisation I borrow from shamelessly. This is the long promised follow-up to my fic, the bones inside you singing out again, in which Brad pays a visit to Doc Bryan and his girlfriend in Philadelphia. Title from "To Take You Home" by Frank Turner.

_picture me there with my hat down low_  
a smile upon my face to let you know  
that I would like to take you home.

The road is long and straight forever and he takes his hands off the bike and coasts. Philadelphia is already behind him, Doc Bryan and his girl with her looped earrings and her belly skimming USMC t-shirt but he's already dreaming north, thinking about Nate just crossing the square with the sun on his shoulders and his bag slung across his chest. Utterly at home; _scholar_ fits him like a second skin. Brad promised to be there by dinnertime and it's a promise that he intends to keep, if it means that he'll see Nate walking towards him, smiling and holding out one hand.

North, north, north. He's dreaming north.

He's had a piece of paper in his wallet for nearly a year now, a corner torn from a notebook page, a date written in Nate's neat handwriting. August is humid this far east and, even with the wind blowing straight across his shoulders, he's sweating in his leathers but it had been raining that day last summer when Nate moved closer in a room that was dark except for the light from the hallway and pushed a note into the pocket of Brad’s jeans at the same time as he kissed him, off-centre, on the corner of his mouth. He remembers pushing his fingers into Nate's non-regulation length hair, but, then again, he remembers a lot of things.

He remembers being in the desert and telling Nate that his command was the only thing that he had absolute faith in.  
He remembers that night with the ambush, and Nate shouting at Ray’s door.  
He remembers Nate smiling, but he couldn't say when that happened.

Nate was smiling the last time Brad saw him in the flesh (they write emails and talk on the phone but it's rare that they snatch a few days in the same space and it's all that Brad can ever do to let go after that). They’d fucked in Brad’s shower in San Diego, Nate’s hair combed back from his face in fingered furrows and his head rolled back against the tiles, one long leg hitched high on Brad’s hip and he’d bit his lip like he was swallowing back a laugh. Brad had kissed him. Nate had been out by then but you don’t just _stop_ being a Marine and Brad had felt the memory in Nate’s muscles and he’d remembered the vague terror of watching Nate run around, unfucking shit in the dark.

Afterwards, he’d lay in his bed with Nate sleeping at his side and he’d tried to pick out what had changed in him and what had stayed the same. Impossible to say; he never has enough time to figure it out as clearly as he’d like but what he knows is this: that Nate Fick is flawless, except for bruises which quickly fade and that nothing that came through the shit-storm that was Operation Iraqi Freedom has any right to heal that quickly.

But if Doc Bryan can meet a beautiful girl in a grocery store then anything can happen.  
They don’t call him the Iceman because he doesn’t feel.

*

And there are places in the world with far more to love about them than Harvard Square, which is something that Brad decided a long time ago. Even Iraq had something if not to _like_ about it then something worth retaining; the colour of the sky, maybe...the way that it sat flush against the sand; the smell of fires at sunset; the cultural memory that, once, the whole fucking place had been a garden.

One day, probably, everything’s going to stop being about Iraq.

He kicks the stand down on the bike and waits. All around him, student types: printed t-shirts and book bags, carefully tousled hair. Scattering of tourists shopping, Harvard Bookstore bags mingled with those from chain-stores and artsy independents and all of it to be carried back halfway around the world again. Brad leans back against a wall, observing everything, admiring nothing, cap pulled down low over his hair. He doesn’t blend in here and neither does Nate, even if one of them belongs here while the other one’s just living on borrowed time. Neither of them really fit here and perhaps neither of them ever will.

“Brad,” he says and Brad wants to tug him close by the back of his neck and kiss him in the shadow of the street lamp that’s just now flickering into life in the humidity of the early evening. In the end, he keeps his hands to himself, doesn’t move, stays right where he is, rooted, and he watches Nate walk towards him, jeans and a green t-shirt, the sort of green that picks out his eyes and make no mistake: Brad is almost ashamed of himself when he notices that.

With a flicker of a smile that says that he knows how ridiculous this all is, Nate holds out his hand and Brad shakes it and it may be ridiculous but it’s also the closest that they’ve been in a couple of months and it’s beyond perfect, the pressure of Nate’s fingers against his.

“Do you want to eat?” asks Nate, but Brad’s not hungry and he can tell from the look on Nate’s face that he’s not hungry either. They developed this out in the desert; they knew each other by sight before they learned each other by touch.

“No,” he says, to be clear.

They’ve had conversations about Brad’s bike before; it’s always been far from Nate’s favourite way to travel. Sometimes, Brad relents and they take a cab or the T but, today, more than anything, Brad wants to feel Nate’s chest pressed against his back in lieu of kisses.

Tonight, there’s not even a dialogue about it. Tonight, Nate just takes the helmet and swings onto the bike behind him.

He takes a long, convoluted way back, pretends to get lost, _does_ got lost in being this close to Nate again and what should be three stops on the red line ends up as nearly an hour on his bike with one of Nate’s hands resting against his side.

Assuredly, Brad is not complaining.

Nate’s apartment is one of those rambling townhouses, twice the size of Brad’s place in San Diego, particularly Bostonian. He’s got a terrace front and back. He’s got rugs that look old and art that looks new, leather couches that definitely look like an investment. Brad takes all of this in while he’s unbuckling his belt, unzipping his jeans and letting them sag down around his hips, mindful of what Nate said on the phone last night, but it’s more than that. It’s starting to feel like he’s in danger of coming out of his skin before he gets out of his clothes. He reaches out for Nate with both hands, snags him by the t-shirt and pulls him in tight. That’s all it takes; Nate’s hands come up, one framing the side of Brad’s face, the other cradling the back of his head. The kiss is hot and off-centre, hard and a little sloppy. It’s a summer in Boston kiss and Brad can’t believe that he’s managed to wait this long.

It’s a fumble but both of them get out of their t-shirts and then it’s bare skin on bare skin and Brad’s head is racing with everything that both of them have said. He takes hold of Nate by the hips, pushing him backwards towards the bedroom. Sometimes, it feels like he knows him as well as he knows his bike, like something that he’s taken apart, held every piece in his hands and felt their separate weight. What Brad knows is that sometimes Nate will and sometimes he won’t and, sometimes, he can set like bone. _Don’t_ , Brad thinks, as close to praying as he ever is as he drags Nate’s t-shirt up over his head and kisses him and leans them both down towards the bed. _Don’t you dare_.

Tonight, though. Tonight, Nate yields like a beating heart.

It feels like a million years since he was lying in Doc Bryan’s guestroom listening to Nate breathe on the line and now he’s got his hand between them and his fingers curled around Nate’s cock, rolling his wrist to stroke him, lips grazing his every time he sighs.

Sometimes, he entertains the thought of getting to do this whenever he likes, but then he remembers the Corps and he wonders how many ways it’s possible to split your heart and he knows that that isn’t a conversation that he ever needs to have with Nate Fick, LT or not.

He kisses him instead.

With the memory of listening to Nate fuck himself with three fingers, Brad presses his own deep into Nate, who is slick and squirming, biting his lip and pushing up into an arch that Brad skims with his other hand, his fingers against Nate’s ribs. More often than not, it’s him on his back in rumpled sheets so he marvels at how beautiful Nate is unguarded moments, just like he marvelled in the desert, whenever Nate looked up at him and smiled.

“I love you,” he murmurs, bending his head and grazing a kiss against the point of Nate’s chin.

Nate sighs, and smiles, that beautiful unguarded smile. He cards his fingers into Brad’s regulation length hair.

“I love you too,” he says, arching, hips hitching down onto Brad’s fingers and he groans softly. It’s totally at odds: that noise, and that fucking angelic smile. He pushes his fingers deeper and watches the way that Nate’s eyelashes flutter.

“Just fuck me, Brad,” he says, and Brad’s already moving, already dragging his fingers free of Nate’s body, pushing one knee up towards Nate’s chest as he curls his fingers around his own cock. He pushes sleekly into Nate’s body and it’s there, the same thought that’s always there, about being made to fit and how he’d always known that and he can’t quite remember when Nate realised it for the first time.

Nate takes his face in both hands and kisses him.

They move together like that, lips together, sharing breath, and the light from the street-lamps slants in across the bed, catches the side of Nate’s face and Brad kisses whatever skin he finds under his mouth and he listens to Nate breathing.

It never lasts as long as he wants it to.  
He never has enough time.

Afterwards, they lie together, limbs tangled, nose to nose on the pillow. Nate shifts and presses a kiss to the tip of Brad’s nose. Brad stifles a yawn against the back of one hand. Sharahah and the kitchen feels a million years ago. He skims his fingers down the bare line of Nate’s arm and tugs him closer.

 _The night hides the world but reveals the Universe_. That was what she said.  
With Nate pulled close and street-light spilling across the sheets as he starts to slip, Brad thinks that, maybe, he gets it now.


End file.
